For my second photo-shoot, I have decided to focus on breaking stereotypical female gender roles. With this approach, I will take a more historical look into the stereotypes of gender, as I feel that comparing the progress in the way women are viewed as individuals provides a very obvious example of the way that gender roles have developed and changed over time. I will be focusing on the more subtle differences in the way women are treated and perceived (both positive and negative sides), and will be showing contrast between images throughout the photo-shoot.
I will be focusing on the strength of individual women in comparison the the way in which they are often perceived by society, and will be making overt comparisons between the ways that men are perceived, versus the way that women are perceived when carrying out certain activities and roles. I will attempt to convey the way in which women have been allowed to have more control over their autonomy, and have been liberated in the sense of controlling their own views on beauty, while also bringing to light how women still struggle with the weight of media/society’s expectations on them to be individual and strong, as well as feminine and beautiful. I will highlight that, when women decide not to abide to societies ideals of beauty, they make people uncomfortable, and i will be using these examples in order to show the contrast between women’s views of themselves in the mid 20th century, versus the present day.
I have created a mind-map to show ideas for photo-shoot 2:
Invisible hands is a very intriguing exhibition by Alicja Rogalska in association with The Morning Boat, and also migrant workers. It is on show at the Jersey Arts Centre and it aims to show Jersey through the perspective of the migrant workers in Jersey. I think this is very important as the seasonal work undertaken by these migrant workers has always been vital to Jersey’s economy, however it is an area that is not very well documented or known about.
As you can see from some of the images on the mood board, technically, the images are not of high quality. This is due to the fact that the migrant workers actually took the images themselves. Because of this the images give us an interesting first hand insight that a photographer would not be able to achieve. So, although they may not be of high technical quality, they are conceptually and contextually rich.
During the exhibition a video was played, which showcased the migrant workers, but not their actual faces in order to allow them to be more honest about what they face. In this video we saw all the migrant workers creating clay potatoes as this is a symbol of what they do. As they were making the potatoes they spoke about important criteria they felt was important to meet in order for an employer to be awarded the Agri-care prize.
The Agri-care prize is an award for the best employer in the agricultural sector, which was created with the help of migrant workers. Through conversations with Polish manual laborers, the criteria for this prize was created. During these discussions, they made clay potatoes as I mentioned above, and the best one was selected to be cast in bronze and used as the physical award. During the exhibition I learned that some of the criteria that the workers felt were important to meet, could only be achieved through legislative changes and industrial action in order to created a fair working environment where workers are not exploited.
I thought that this exhibition was very important. Highlighting this aspect of Jersey’s agricultural sector is super important as there is not much known about it, meaning that there are many people living and working in conditions that most people would be appalled by. This exhibition highlights the importance of being socially aware, through first hand testimony and images which triggers emotion within the viewers, which in my opinion, makes it a very effective exhibition and project. I really like how the photographer decided to let the migrant workers capture the images, as it allowed the concept to shine through more clearly compared to if she had decided to photograph it herself. I also think that having a video conveyed more emotion and context as images are limited to only appealing to an audience visually, where as being able to hear from the actual people who are suffering makes it more personal. The exhibition name “invisible hands” is emphasized by the fact that no one face is seen in the video, and it also has a metaphorical meaning as these are the people that our society, sadly, doesn’t notice.
I especially like this exhibition, as it partially fits into the beginning of my personal study since both my parents were economic migrants before they decided to settle in Jersey.
For my first photo-shoot, I will be focusing on the liberation of male gender stereotypes and roles. I have decided to dedicate a photo-shoot to this, as I think including both male and female stereotypes, and struggles related to the pressure of abiding to a strict “gender model”. In being able to showcase men breaking from the gender norms of being strong, unemotional, adventurous and competitive, I will be able to show a new perspective, where men are presented as being delicate and emotional human beings, and are not confined to the characteristics that society has laid out for them. For this photo-shoot, I will take a lot of inspiration from photographer Phoebe Jane Barrett, as in her work she portrays the delicate, emotional side of men, and draws attention to the unrealistic belief that all men must be emotionally detached and constantly strong in order to qualify as having masculinity. In taking inspiration from Barrett, I will be showing contrast between stereotypical femininity and masculinity in my work, and will be highlighting this contrast through overt and obvious visual examples, such as placing a masculine object/action/concept directly next to a feminine one, or merging the two together.
I have decided to take the approach of merging together both feminine and masculine traits in an obvious but thought provoking manner, and in order to do so, I will be using a male subject, and will be placing him in stereotypically feminine situations and scenarios, all the while keeping his identity hidden from view. In doing this, the viewer will be forced to only consider the contrast between the male model and feminine activity/scene, and will only be able to develop an opinion on the actions themselves, rather than the identity of the subject. Removing the identity of the subject also allows for the conclusions that the viewer develops, to be generalized to all individuals and scenarios in which there is a contrast between the stereotypical “gender” of a specific activity/scene/scenario, rather than focusing on the identity and individual scenario that the subject is in.
I have produced a mood-board in order to collect some of my ideas for my 1st photo-shoot:
John Stezaker is a contemporary British Conceptual artist who is best known for his collages of found images taken on postcards, film stills and commercial photographs. Stezaker’s work resembles early Surrealist and Dada collages.
With surgical like precision, Stezaker overlays distinct images to create new personalities, landscapes and scenes. “I’m using an archive to create another archive of my own,” he elaborates. “My ideal is to do very little to the images, maybe just one cut: the smallest change or the most minimal mutilation. What I do is destructive, but also an act of deliberate passivity.”
Stezaker has a collection of photographs, some which have been sliced in half diagonally or carefully cut around so that only a silhouette of the face remains. He collects photographs in order to deface them and in the process, create something new. His collages give old images a new meaning. He states that “There is something very odd, even unnerving about cutting through a photograph; It sometimes feels like I am cutting though flesh.”
One of Stezaker’s most famous series is called Mask where he fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with natural landscapes or architecture to create images of eerie beauty. By simply placing an old coloured postcard of a landscape across a face he creates a strange new world. The end results are both deceptively simple in their execution and oddly disturbing in their suggestion. “When we look at a face, we assume that we are looking behind the face for a personality”, he says, “By making literal that behindness, I often create something that twists into an image of horror”.
I have chosen John Stezaker as one of my references for my personal investigation because I like the concept of hiding the facial features of the subject with a postcard showcasing nature or architecture. When I create my own collages, instead of using postcards I will use archival images depicting countries I have lived in and their most iconic scenery and architecture. These photographs will make the country clearly identifiable through symbolism and well known places or landscapes. These archive images will cover the face from my current self to convey how living in different countries has shaped my current identity. Perhaps I could also capture portraits of my parents since when I think of “home” I associate it with them since I haven’t had a long term house or place I have lived at. In order to replicate Stezaker’s collage style from the series Masks, the archival images will have to blend with the face. Although there will be minimal manipulation to the images, the overall design will have a huge impact.
The image depicts a collage created by superimposing a postcard on a black and white photograph. The photograph is a film publicity portrait of an unidentifiable actor taken during the 1940s or 1950s. the postcard is a colour image mounted over the actor’s face. It showcases a rocky cavern in which a sandy track curves around a central pillar. The postcard photograph appears to have been taken from inside the cave looking out through two openings towards the light. Stezaker has positioned the card on the actor’s face so that the dark silhouette of the rocky opening and the curvature of the cavern line up with the contours of the actor’s face. This placement creates human features. The two openings to the light suggest eyes connected by the rocky central column which covers the actors face in the position of his nose. This is an unusual composition and is definitely associated with the term “uncertainty” because we as viewers have no idea who the person behind the postcard is. His story is also unknown and we do not know the reason why that image has been associated with him, other than the fact that the suggested facial features of the postcard aligns with the portrait.
Looking into my key words of myths, legends and stories surrounding the idea of occupation I came across Anna Gaskell, a contemporary American artists known for exploring themes such as Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865). Using photography, video, and drawing, Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives. Born on October 22nd, 1969 Gaskell would create mostly self-portraits in the style to that of Cindy Sherman, from this she developed to taking photographs of young girls in odd or ambiguous scenes as seen in her series Wonder (1996-97). Gaskell is famous for her dream-like narrative photographs which make reference to children’s games, literature and psychology.
Gaskell’s film influences range from the Noir to French New Wave and Horror. In a series entitled Hide (1998), she sets up a narrative using the sinister Brothers’ Grimm story The Magic Donkey, which is about a young women who disguises herself under pelts to hide from a marriage proposal from her own father. The series evokes a sense of terror through the scenery of a gothic mansion and contrast of light and dark in a dimly lit space.
Gaskell explains, “Trying to combine fiction, fact and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work”, this gives me ideas and influence of how she is a good artist for me to look into and have influence and inspiration from with the ideas of taking a starting point of fiction, using the fact and not only that but my own influence I feel is something very important that I could use as I have the influence of my own personal experiences of being told the sorties and living in and around the island.
I have chosen to look at Gaskell as one of my artists as I enjoy and am finding a lot of inspiration in the way she takes her photographs and presents them with the lighting and the costumes and effects that her photographs using the lighting but also the double characters I feel is a really interesting take in some of her work. In my own work I plan on producing photoshoots in the style of tableaux photography, staging the photographs and having the models in costume and makeup.
Analysis of Anna Gaskell’s work:Wonder & Override
Gaskell’s work is produced and influenced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from larger plots such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is visible in the two series: Wonder (1996-97) and Override (1997). Gaskell’s style of ‘narrative photography” the images are planned and staged; the scenes presented are ‘artificial’ in that it exists only to be photographed. Gaskell’s process can be mentioned as similar to filming however there is an important difference; Gaskell’s photographs are not tied together by a linear thread, it is staged and created to be as though all of the events take place simultaneously, in an ever-present. In untitled #9 of the wonder series, a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor; in untitled #17 it appears again, forced into a girls mouth with no explanation of how or why. This suspension of time and causality leads to a sense of ambiguity that she uses to evoke a vivid and dream like world.
Below I have a photograph from the wonder series, it shows two girls in the frame one lent over and holding onto the other and holding her nose. Gaskell’s girls do not represent individuals, but act out the contradictions and desires of a single psyche, Gaskell uses a pair of twins for Alice for the identicalness. While their unity is subset by their identical clothing and looks, the mysterious and often cruel rituals they act out upon each other may be metaphors for disorientation and mental illness. In wonder and override, the character collectively evoked is Alice, perhaps lost in the Wonderland of her own mind, unable to determine whether the bizarre things happening to her are real or the result of her imagination.
In the photograph below we can see both of the twins in the costume of Alice, one holding onto the nose sat above the other, the photograph is taken or has been cropped quite close up into the characters, it is creating a sense of intimacy to be that close to the subjects of the photographs but the cropping also cuts out the surroundings of the girls, it removes the context of what is happening around them and leaves the onlooker to be able to use the story of Alice in Wonderland that they know to create ideas of what is happening in this photograph alongside the other photographs. The lighting of the photograph creates an eery aura of the photograph the dark shadows on the girls I feel creates a dramatic effect that I want to try to incorporate into my own work when I start to develop the tableaux images in my personal investigation. The almost chiaroscuro lighting creates that dramatic effect on the girl in the top of the photograph.
My area of study is going to be war photography, as it is related to the topic were studying (occupation vs. liberation) and because I have a lot of family history with wars. Specially with how my great grandpa was a high rank and a really appreciated leader by his country and even other countries like Palestine. His biggest achievement was leading the whole Jordanian army in Al Karamah battle and that is what I will be focusing on. I’m going to start first by talking about how I heard of his stories, then I’m going to talk about his story and achievements, lastly, I’m going to finish up by talking about how he affected me personally. Meanwhile I will be using artists references throughout.
The artist I’m going to be studying first and analyzing is Paul Burnal as he is a war author which is similar to what I’m working on, and i chose him specifically out of a lot of war authors as he wrote one of my favorite books which is Batterie Lothringer and is based on photographs taken in Jersey about wars so that will give me easy access to take the similar photographs.
I am going to be responding to his work by studying him and his history first, then I’m going to try and do similar photographs as his.
The quote that caught my eyes as I was reading his book is “…Buried four bodies today, I was quite tired from all these going on” (Burnal,2015:221); As it just shows how much he suffered and was just done with everything going on which relates to my story as I kind of had to suffer from the effect of war on me.
Paragraph 1
I also want to link cultural-ism to my project as it somehow has an effect on everything that’s included in my project, the basic idea about cultural-ism is that it is the idea that individuals are determined by their culture, that these cultures form closed, organic wholes, and that the individual is unable to leave his or her own culture but rather can only realize him or herself within it. Which also relates to how i came to Jersey for education and still want to complete my wish of going into going into the navy as my great grandpa influenced me to after his achievements, but even if i want to join an English based army force i will not be able to just become English while i’m there no matter how long i stay i will always have my culture that will not change no matter what.
i like this photograph as i shows three different people from three different cultures yet they’re all serving for the same country
I want to use this photograph as proof of my idea of cultural ism as you can see how even though the guy in the middle is serving for a different culture he still kept his cultural identity and didn’t try to hide it but yet he wanted to show it off to everybody by dressing as his culture would with his head dress and facial hair. And this relates to how i would be if i was to join an English army force i would still practice my own cultural practices.
How has stories and literature influenced the work of Anna Gaskell?
Traditionally, throughout the 20th century photography was centred around capturing the decisive moment, however, we have come to explore the notion of creating this ‘decisive moment’ artificially, constructing scenes made for only the purpose of photography. Tableaux photographs have been made from the beginning of the medium, although Staged photography emerged as its own known genre in the 1980’s; both ideas involve composing a scene much like a painting, creating elements of Pictorialism. Anna Gaskell creates ominous photographs of women, taking themes from literature and stories, generating a dream-like narrative in her work. I chose to look at Gaskell due to her staged and tableaux approaches and how she uses her influences to warp them into her own narratives and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I am to review the extent to which stories and literature has influence her work using her imagery for Wonder (1996-97) influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Hide (1998) influenced by Brother’s Grimm tale The Magic Donkey. In my own work I intent to explore the stories of the myths and folklore based in my home of Jersey. Using Gaskell as my influence to explore the notions of the boundaries of a narrative from a literacy influence in the visual work and representations. I plan to explore these notions with the narrative of the legends, through tableaux and landscape the reality of these stories and their occupation of the island.
Historical Context:
The movement that took the medium of photography and reinvented it into an art form is known to be Pictorialism. Pictorialists wanted to make the photographs look like painting and drawings to penetrate the art work, this eventually would happen and go on to juxtapose the original purpose of photographs. In 1839 photography was first used in order to objectively present subjects scientifically, images were highly scientific, fixing the point on objects, and was not considered an art form; that is until pictorialism was presented. The shift from photography being used to produce purely scientific and representational images happened from the 1850s when advocates such as the English painter Willian John Newton suggested that photography could also be artistic. Although it can be traced back to these early ideas, the Pictorialist movement was most active during the 1880s and 1915, during its peak it had an international reach with centers in England, France and the USA. Pictorialists were the first to begin to try and class photography as an art form, by doing so they spoke about the artistic value of photography as well as a debate surrounding the manipulation of photographs and the social role that eventually holds.
Pictorialist photographers used a range of darkroom techniques that allow the photographers to express themselves creatively using it as a medium to tell stories.
Anna Gaskell:
Untitled #8 (Wonder)
Anna Gaskell is a contemporary American artist known for creating contemporary work exploring themes from literature and stories. Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives, she explains her process of an attempt “to combine fiction, fact, and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work.”, Gaskell is creating imagery by merging together reality, fiction and her own personal touches of the two warping and blurring the lines between the known stories and her own twist on them. Creating photographs that depict narratives from literature that may not be the original people know, Gaskell takes her influences and warps them into her own, stretching the boundaries of the narrative of the stories and literature that has influenced her work. Gaskell’s work dips into the notion of Pictorialism, using tableaux methods to generate her photographs. Gaskell’s photo series “Wonder” is influenced off Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the work is produced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from the larger plots. The photographs are staged and planned in the style of ‘narrative photography’, the scenes are artificial, produced and only exist to be photographed.
“The process of manipulation starts as soon as we frame a person, a landscape, an object or a scene with our cameras.” (Bright and Van Erp. 2019:18)
“From Daguerre’s age to ours, photography has undergone a transformation, not only technologically but conceptually.”(Bright and Van Erp. 2019:18)
‘The daguerreotype had aspirations to both the realistic and the theatrical, as well as to the commercial. The ‘mirror’ can serve as a metaphor for reality, whereas the red velevt evokes theatre curtains, within which the beautiful drama would unfold’ (Bright and Van Evp, 2019; 17)
Bibliography: Bright, S. and Van Erp, H.(2019), Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing House
The first photoshoot in my personal investigation will introduce the setting of the current ‘spare room’:
Explore lighting in the room using shutters/curtains for best ambience,
Highlight bareness and clear lack of use of the room itself,
Opportunities to show its previous uses as a spare bedroom and playroom,
The first steps towards the redecoration of the room begin with new paint and simple wall decorations,
Portraits of subject painting,
Close ups of paint/card swatches/brushes/rollers/paint on hands,
(Paint/card swatches for photo-book).
Photoshoot 2:
The next photoshoot in my personal investigation will take place in a small social setting. The aim of this shoot is to compose several images, both portraits and close ups of objects:
Two parts of the shoot: day time/night time,
Explore lighting in the car both during the day and at night; shade from trees/street lights/weather/car lights/glare,
Portraits of subjects socialising,
Use of wing/rear view mirrors to frame the shot,
Close ups of objects used by subjects/interior of car/reflection in mirror/chiaroscuro,
Eye contact/posing/candid,
Take photographs from both inside and outside the car/windows up or down/headlights on,
“under what circumstances are these images to be trusted as real?” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 17)
“If manipulation is the first thing someone thinks of in connection to photography, what does that say about the value of the photograph as a reflection of reality?“(Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 17)
“what are the differences between reality and witness and points of view?” (Bright, S. and van Erp, H. 2019; 18)
“photography has undergone a transformation, not only technologically but conceptually” (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 18)
“it has gradually taken on an ever more ambiguous, complicated and fraught character”(Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 18)
Bibliography: Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. (2019), Photography Decoded. London: Octopus Publishing House
